Google's Wi-Fi Data-Harvesting Claims Back Under ICO Investigation

The long-running saga of Google's Street View cars and what user data they did/didn't harvest and if it was/wasn't done on purpose has exploded back into life, with claims that Google purposefully built code to grab our data from unsecured Wi-Fi networks seeing the search giant back under the eye of the UK Information Commissioner’s Office.

The ICO is currently looking at the new developments in the US, where Google staffer is currently "pleading the fifth" over suggestions he was given the job of creating a piece of software to sniff out data for use in possible future Google projects.

The ICO investigated Google's Street View fleet's activities back in 2010, when it was eventually satisfied that Google had "accidentally" harvested user data through unsecured Wi-Fi points. The latest claims say that wasn't entirely true, with senior Google managers knowing the plan, and instructing Brit coder Marius Milner to build the sniffer code. [Telegraph]